Anyone who has started their own business or who has been running their business for years; will agree on one thing – managing time effectively is pivotal to success or making money sooner. It is as simple as that, it directly influences your results in business.

If you have just started, it goes without saying that you are most likely juggling several balls at once. Helping hands are few, so you are forced to do everything and be everything, the accountant, the marketer and the visionary, etc. You work like a ‘one man army’, it leaves you out of breath and often overwhelmed.

There are only a certain amount of hours a day and you need to optimize how you spend those hours, because time is certainly money. If you are able to chalk out a time management strategy, your productivity will increase tremendously and so will your results.

Developing time management skills and finding ways to really leverage your time, is often pushed down the list of our priorities due to pressing operational demands. If you don’t have time to create a strategy, here are 5 simple ways that you can improve your time management skills and your results.

1. Be specific about goals and how to achieve them

Always align your actions with your goals. This might sound obvious, but are you doing it? There are two parts to this tip… first you need to have clear goals that you are working towards; with deadlines. How much money do you want to make by a certain time for example.

Secondly, you need to be clear on what you should be doing every day that will lead to the achievement of your bigger goals. Don’t aimlessly take action based on what you ‘think you should’ be doing. Your goals and actions need to be connected; otherwise you will find that you work on tasks that give you a sense of accomplishment, but no real results. It all starts with creating your roadmap to success.

2. Organize yourself

Implement whatever type of system will work best for you, but you need to have some sort of structure to be organized. Getting organized is about having an organized mind, and a system which supports you to do things more effectively and efficiently. There are many time management tools that ironically, unless used properly, are actually counterproductive. So don’t be put off if what you have tried doesn’t work, it most likely doesn’t work because you have not been shown how to make it work.

3. Know where you need to improve

Nobody is perfect, while you are good at some things, you could be weak at some others. Of course we all have our blind spots, but the real question is, are you open to identifying them? There is no point in learning new time management skills, if you haven’t mastered the skills you have now. Identify your time thieves, what are you doing that is undermining your results? Be honest with yourself and focus on correcting one thing at a time. You know if you don’t manage your email well or if you procrastinate every day, now you need to do something about it.

4. Develop your awareness skills

Time management is not only related to planning, prioritizing, delegating, etc. In fact, most of your struggles to manage your time come from you, and how you are thinking. Developing awareness at times when you don’t feel like doing something, or when you fear something or resist something, will help you to manage your time better.

Why? Let’s say that you are procrastinating with certain tasks. You might be procrastinating because you aren’t actually motivated to do that task, or you aren’t actually clear on why you are doing it. Either way, unless you take time to become aware of the reasons you are behaving the way you are, you won’t be able to fix the root, the cause of the problem. Until you fix the root of the problem, you will continue to experience it and your business will suffer as a result.

5. Stay focused

Even if you have your sights set on your goals, you might find it difficult to stay focused. Just before you begin the task at hand, make it easier for yourself to stay focused. Remove distractions around you, prevent interruptions and commit to completing the task before starting something else. It is when we start and stop, when we change our focus or we give into other stimulus, that we really waste the most time. There are many ways in which you can boost your focus, go for it!

Starting a business isn’t easy, but well worth it. Don’t waste time doing things ineffectively, when the effort required to master your time, will support you in mastering your success. Often, it is not time that is lacking, but time management skills – Kirstin O’Donovan

I don’t think I’ve ever met a business owner who wasn’t busy. Managing your time is one of the hardest things you’ll need to do as an entrepreneur. There’s always too much to do, so you’ll need to manage your time well in order to get everything done. Here are my top time management tips:

1. Find out what you’re doing with your time.

One of the first things to do is to actually find out what you are doing with your time. Try monitoring your time for a week and see what’s going on. Use colour coding if it makes things easier i.e. yellow for administrative tasks; blue for marketing; green for client work and so on. At the end of the week, you’ll be able to see what you’re spending too much time on and adjust your time accordingly.

2. Get organised

The more organised you get yourself, the more you’ll be able to handle all the tasks you need to do. Tidy your desk; set up filing systems; and have procedures to deal with the work that comes in. I know it’s hard, but try to deal with each thing only once so that you get it out of the way.

3. Practise the “Do it now” philosophy

As soon as a new task comes in, try to “do it now”. You’ll be amazed at how many tasks you can get rid of. Things very rarely take as long as you think they will once you get cracking.

4. Do things in short bursts

If you’re really not looking forward to doing a task, make yourself do it for 5 minutes only. If you know you’re only going to be doing it for 5 minutes, it doesn’t look as daunting. And once you’ve got started on the task, you’ll probably find you’ll continue on it once the 5 minutes is up.

5. Ask yourself “what’s stopping you?”

Lack of time is often used as an excuse for not doing something. If you find yourself putting something off because you “don’t have the time”, ask yourself what’s going on. Questioning what’s stopping you completing tasks can often really help you decide whether or not to do them.

6. Don’t be afraid to drop a task

Look, if you haven’t completed a task; you’ve asked yourself “what’s stopping you”; and you’ve reached the conclusion that you really don’t want to do it, don’t be afraid to drop the task altogether. We often agree to things that don’t actually benefit us and if a task falls into this category, make the decision that you have the choice to drop the task.

7. You have a choice

As entrepreneurs, we start each day with a blank piece of paper and choose how to fill our time. You don’t have to agree to everything unless you want to do it or it helps you to achieve your goals.

8. Set goals

Setting goals will help keep you motivated and focused. Decide on three personal goals that you’d love to complete over the next year and three business ones. The goals must be things that you really want to do. Your time should then be spent on tasks and activities that help you complete these goals.

9. Accept that it’s impossible to get everything done

There’s only so much time in a day. Even if you’re the most efficient person ever, if you have too many tasks you won’t get them all completed. Accept this and don’t feel too guilty if you miss out on a few.

10. Have fun

Finally, remember as an entrepreneur to have some fun. Running a business isn’t all about working – take some time off too. If you develop a hobby or an interest that takes your mind off the business, you’ll be much more productive as a result.

There’s no one solution to managing your time. The trick is to find things that work for you, Try different things, have fun and do the things that help you to achieve your goals for what you want from your business.

We, like most other successful Network Marketer’s have become students of Personal Development. Without keeping on top of your mindset, conditioning your belief system and realizing that it can be done it is very difficult to be massively successful. In the continuing process of our success we have read many many books. Some have been around for a long time and are staples in every Networkers Library while others are relatively new and should be. We thought we would take a moment and share with you some of our favorite books. Each of these books has had a significant impact on us personally and our business as well.

So here we go with our top 10 reads ( it may be difficult to narrow it down to 10 ). These books are not in any order, just the 10 books we have enjoyed of late: